The official Blog of Baraka G. Muganda, World Youth Ministries Director for the World Church of Seventh-day Adventists

Monday, October 1, 2007

Imagine If We Had Our Own Seventh Day Adventist Social Networking Site

It is true today that there are so many Social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, MSN Spaces etc. Imagine if the Seventh day Adventist Church would come up with its own social networking version for our youth. A site that has all the Seventh day Adventist look. Imagine a site where all our youth would meet and find friends, discuss issues that are common among them without any of all these advertisements that sometimes have very questionable outlooks.

This is my dream and the dream of many of those who working at the General Conference Youth Ministries Department. To create a social-networking site that has all departments of the church linked together. One where, while you are chatting with friends, you can go check out what the church is doing and how you can help in the mission of the church. For example, while you are chatting with your friends about volunteering, you can just click on the Adventist Volunteering link and you will see all the volunteering opportunities that are available in your church worldwide. This site will be created and operated by Adventist youth. This site will nurture and challenge youth to participate in the mission of the church while they hanging out with other youth who share their lifestyle and beliefs.

Research says that 61% percent of 13 -17 year-olds have a personal profile on online social networking sites like MySpace, Friendster or Xanga. And two-thirds of all adolescents, many of them Seventh-day Adventist Youth, report using instant messaging. This blows my mind!! So many youth now hang out at these sites!!! We need our own site. ... It is not an option - the church must embark on this dream. If not, high technology (and maybe our children) will leave us behind.

This dream can come through. The General Conference Administration is looking into the possibility of starting such a site, but we need to hear from you. They need to know that it is needed. Let us have your take on this matter.Do you think it is worth pursuing?Will many young people social network on this site?Will you switch your site to this one so that you can join other youth of the Seventh day Adventist Church?Share you thoughts on this with usCan you suggest a name this new site? Check the Insight website for an entry form and a gift?Let me hear from you.

Just imagine having our own Seventh day Adventist Social networking site like 'MySpace'. Youth ministry is in the business of fishing for youth and we must go where the fish are; and in today's world we will find our youth at these sites!! Let me hear from you - what is your comment!

thats a great idea baraka.its time the GC realizes that one of its core missions is uniting the body of believers into one family not limited by divisions. hopefully this will allow me to connect with my brethren in china and else where. remember unity was a prerequisite for pentecost.

p.s also get other officers to connect with people like you are doing now Baraka!!

While I think it is a great idea. There are stacks of sda sites that have been started and never really taken off. I think that if the money was invested in insuring that the current websites/technology was updated and used efficiently reguarly that would be better and just use the networking sites that are already hugely successful. Unless of course all the youth directors around the world used it allll the time then it would be very useful and effective. In my experience the technology is only as good as the people that use it.

My concern would be that you would create the illusion of a "safe" place for young people. On the internet there is no such place. The sharing of personal information must be limited to those we know personally, and can verify their purpose in life.

I fear that our youth (and many adults) seek friends on the internet as a way of covering up their own failures or short-comings. I saw this a lot during my experience with SDA dating sites, and in much the same way the young folks in the church who maintain My Space pages are not entirely honest about their "profile".

That's my two cent's worth. Thanks for trying to help the youth and the church.

YES! YES! Please make one for us! Us youth shouldn't be in the current networking sites due to all the bad content and influences. I would be one of the first to sign on. I pray that this idea works, because it is a neccessity. I have been dreaming of a site where youth can network and be informed about our church all in the same design-ish site! 3/4ths of my church friends don't even know what a division is! I lovve the idea of information on how you can get involved. Please don't delay!

My only concern is that within almost every Adventist social networking site, there are kids and many times adults who have had a bad experience in the church or disagree with many the Bible's doctrines. They have confused many with there anger and hurt, including myself. I don't want this to happen in an Adventist social networking sites for us youth to grow and learn more. Sites like the earliteens' sabbath school forum (real time faith) has many times confused adults confusing us kids! That's why I think we should not have a forum in the new site. There should be directories of finding youth leaders' pages and profiles along with our friends' but no forum. There should be video and photo uploads along with blogs on our profiles. Oh, and that the pages have an option of being set to private would be excellent.

I agree with alot of what I've seen posted so far, i.e. dealing with predators and most teens want to be on a site where all their friends are and getting their non-advetist friends to utilize the site might be difficult. If this does come to be keep us parents in mind, currently I monitor my daughter's myspace page, our agreement for her having one is that I have to know her user name and password so that I can go on and check her messages and content as well as her friends pages for content. I also have a myspace page that I had for 1 year before she got one and I can also view her site way too and see some of what's being said.

Well, once the necessary safe guards are put in then it would be an excellent idea. Make sure it has a chat option where people can log into and converse with their adventist brethren from around the world.

Im from Costa Rica, Im 18 and I think thats a wonderful Idea, Im ansious to meet many friends all over the word, I don't want to get married but may be that this page change my thinking by nowing someone special, I"ll like to inviate people to my country because my country is a very small country but its beautiful. Its a wise and wonderfull idea, I've been waiting for it during a long time, God bless all of you.

I have to tell you, that dream is already a reality. "http://adventistasenlared.com/" is a spanish SDA myspace networking, has 5 month old and is working good. The webmaster has a lot of experience dealing with this, will be a good idea to contact him, his profile is, "http://www.adventistasenlared.com/ctarrosado", he is living in USA; and instead of start the process again will be better to support the ones that are already working. I think the www.presentruth.com ministry is ready to start one, so like i said before, sopport them will be a good idea.

Hi i'm Bradford,16,from Jamaica,W.I. i think this idea is great. it could be used also in such a way to also convert other youth into S.D.A. christians. However there r some problems with this concept:1 just as another commenter said no where on the internet is "safe".2 also the site would need to be updated frequently unlike other adventist sites ranging from local -divisional.3 there can't only be christian-based stuff; not sayin that it should be wild & out but it should have certain oundaries which would allow youth to express themselves freely.

but apart from these 3 comments i think that it is a good and much needed site.

great stuff. hailing down from africa down south, i think this will work perfectly as a lot of my adventist cousins & friends use these non-christian instans messaging and i am wondering what kind of people are they meeting there & what value are they adding to their lives. if they can have access to this exclusive social adventist site it wud make me sleep at night and as a youth leader i think this will be a way to go and all our hardwork leading the youth will not go to waste.

great stuff. hailing down from africa down south, i think this will work perfectly as a lot of my adventist cousins & friends use these non-christian sites & instant messagings and i am wondering what kind of people are they meeting there & what value are these people adding to their lives. if they can have access to this exclusive social adventist site it wud make me sleep at night and as a youth leader i think this will be a way to go cos all our hardwork leading the youth will not go to waste.

Baraka this is awesome, i support this initiative 100000%. will pray for it all the time.

:) I really love the idea.. I am the creator of the Seventh-Day Adventist Youth group on Friendster, and since I've created the page, we have more than 2500 Adventist Youths registered to be in our members. I still have hard time adding many more youths that are still pending to be a member. Almost every week, there are about 3-5 members wanting to be added in our AY Friendster group. Now I'm trying to expand our Adventist Youth community to MySpace, but we're not doing so well there. I'm hoping that there will be an Adventist Community for only Adventists, but I also believe, in sharing our talents, love, and message of Christ, we need to go public. We need to also share our message to other young people that long to see Christ the way we see Him.Our Adventist Youth Group on Friendster is located here...http://www.friendster.com/group/tabmain.php?gid=11454May we all give our time to share the message of Christ. Not just at home, but through every corner of the world.

I don't think that people will really "switch" they current Websites to the new one, but they will still use it thou.

A Website such as you "imagine" would requite a big invest of resources and a big team of people that can manage it, make improvements, moderate, etc.

You know, I'm from Chile and I've just visited your Blog, I have never heard of it before. Would be nice if you can spread ideas like this one to different conferences in the world so we can all know about what is going on around.

Also, would be nice if you can recruit people from every language to work on something like this.

I hope God can bless this project, to you and your family in this important ministry that you work on.

To handle the challenge of "switching", consider an integration with OpenSocial (one of Google's latest projects), which would allow people to integrate with other popular social networking sites (MySpace, etc) and not feel forced to choose one over the other.

Great Idea as long as you make an effort to advertise it so people who don't normally go to your website will know it exists. Also we need to replace the insight with video's. I am a SS teacher for a youth class. Since I started sourcing relevant video's my class size went from 1 to 9 or 10 each week.

Thats a fabulous idea pastor, i would rather spend time networking with adventist friends who i know will make me grow spiritually while we have n share a lot in common,I would even make an effort to meet them.In an adventist Networking site i would invite my non-adventist friends and my adventist friends would minister and treat them nicely such that they would be interested and encouraged to join the church. Please launch it..

Yes! I would not deter you. It would be very useful to have a social networking system on the internet specifically for the edification of the youth. It is a brilliant idea and it makes sense too. Many youth spend their time chatting on the net, researching on the net, almost everything on the net. However with every great idea, there will be problems but I believe by putting God first and foremost in overcoming obstacles, the impossible in human eyes will be possible. I support you totally and I look forward to being on that networking site.

Yes!! you should do it.. I am one of those who is fun of myspace, friendster..etc. I am not even a teenager anymore. I think the GC should have one.. it is so cool to have all SDA youth or not to be in one site and talk about anything and share things and they are not afraid or hesitant to share because they know that all that are in this site can understand them and will not discriminate them. It would be really cool.. hope it will be real so soon....

Hello to all the believers out there. I really think this is a great idea. Boo-Hoo to all those whe think it's a waste of money. No one said everything would be perfect, if you fail at something you can learn from it and strengthen yourself.

It's about time something like this came about and I FULLY SUPPORT IT. I can tell my friends to come and post a comment.

After reading some of the other comments I just had to post another. By way of information, there is no place on the internet that is safe. You will always have someone who has a false profile posted and so it is only right to turn to God and say a prayer in our hearts. Never forget to pray about it and you never know who may be hurting and not want anyone to know the real them. This situation is only an opportunity for witnessing about the love of Jesus.

I know that they asked for our comment but I had to say something. Where else would I be able to say hi to all the Seventh-day Adventist folk. That's why we need this.

I believe that is a wonderful idea, an opportunity to move "Beyond the Obvious" (your great words) and begin an opportunity for youth around the world to connect and share in the common experience of Salvation and Service. My only concern is that this site moves beyond the obvious of just a social site to one that will foster the total development of youth for service and salvation. I think that in all we do the end of it all should be "touching lives on earth so that we all enjoy salvation above". I certainly would join in the groundwork. Keeep it up Pastor.

I think its a great idea that someone is finally thinking about our young people because they are our future. And as Jesus said to Peter " Launch out into the sea, and let down the net" that's what we need to do, it is only by faith in God that our plans can become a reality and if it is His will that this site becomes a success and a blessing to His Holy name He will see it through. All we need to do is have faith. So My dear bro. in Christ go with God and Hiss blessings. Pastor I hope you are planning to visit us again here in Trinidad, its always a pleasure to have someone from our world body gracing us with their pressence.So until then God bless!!!

Let's do it! As long as it is fresh, true to us and not too much like a "wannabe myspace". Pitch it to the colleges first and see how successful it is there and then open it up to all Adventist Youth. It will be an awesome networking tool!

Yes, that's a great idea! Now I'm so exited about this project too! Seventh-day Adventist youth would be able to meet people of their own faith from all over the world! Besides, one could navigate in an Adventist site in a much safer way than one does in MySpace, hi5, etc, meeting people who of the same faith, the same Jesus. And, yes, the idea about the departments linked together is a great idea too. So we can learn what's going on and what opportunities are out there to get involved or something. I just attended the 2nd WCYCS in Taiwan, and it was such a beautiful and nice experience. I'd like to contact people who also attended that World Congress, and a networkiing Adventist version would be a great chance. Meeting Adventist young people from all over the world is such a nice experience. So let's pray about this project and if it's God's will, let's do it! Thanks for letting us know. May God richlly bless you!!!!

We have a mission as a church to "go into all the world". Rather than setting up our own little "adventist fortress" site I'd encourge more and more adventist youth to utilise facebook, myspace etc -- but use them for God, for witness, to let others know that Adventist Christian youth are real people who can have real fun within our real belief and values system.

Good day saints,the idea is a great 1.I am up 4 it.We need now to implement and get it going.This can help also with evangelism,as we can simply reffer our friends to where they spend most of their time,which is the net.IT IS POSSIBLE

Adventists are always behind the eight ball when it comes to technology and spreading the gospel to all the nations. We should be the head and not the tail. While there are dangers, we can't focus on those things. We have to spread the message despite difficulties. Jesus knew he was going to die but that didn't stop him from spreading the message. We should be no different today. We have the truth and should pray that we overcome any difficulties.

Given the knowledge and talents that God has blessed me with, I started a social network for adventist myself. This is a project I am working on to improve. I am an Adventist from birth and will continue to help the community. Given the growth of our church, our young people had nothing holding them to Adventism once they are away from the church. I created http://sdalinkup.com as a method to help them. Unfortunately, like so many have posted before me, it is difficult to get them to come to an Adventist social network because they may feel restricted and subject to scrutiny. I love my young people and they are the reason why I created this site.Marlon - webmaster http://sdalinkup.com

counceling is beneficial to every human being, a source of strenght and purity of heart, human interaction in Gods Purpose keeps vigilance and awakens sleeping soul for God's holy mission, May the spirit of God be your guide and help in this wonderful task

I like to visit your blog about online friends and searching girls and boys for fun. I have a social networking website and indian friends online community to get more friends to be reached our personal and official friendship.

About Me

I hail from Tanzania,East Africa. Serengeti and Mount Kilimanjaro find a home in this beautiful tropical country. Have spent part of my life in Zimbabwe and now I live here in United States with my wonderful wife and three adult daughters. Of course one is married. Currently I work at the World Headquarters of the Seventh Day Adventist Church as World Youth Director.